This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

NATO Post-Mortem

In my book ‘Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’, and in other works since its publication, I have noted that the world needs not only a coordinating body that would be akin to a world government, but also, and urgently, a rapid deployment force- to use the NATO terminology - that could respond to natural disasters as well as military attacks anywhere, at short notice. Thus, when Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who just stepped down as NATO Secretary General in a blaze of glory at the biggest ever summit in Wales, announced the creation of such as force albeit without the natural disaster component, my first thought was that the infamous organization had finally done something useful.

This week's ‘Crosstalk’, on RT, discusses NATO’s reasons for depicting Russia as its enemy, affirming that a Rapid Response Force on an enemy’s borders was purely defensive.Alexander Mercouris, an astute political analyst, argued convincingly that NATO’s campaign against Russia is in fact about eventually taking on China. Rather than simply ‘defeating’ Russia, as most Western analysts believe, Washington wants to fold it and its vast resources into a Caucasian empire in order to defeat the much more threatening China, with its 1.3 billion plus inhabitants and roaring economy.

Mercouris’ analysis implies that the struggle is once again between two world views: not ‘capitalism vs communism’ as in the long post-World War II period, but between efforts to build a cooperative world community by the world’s multi-colored majority, joined by Russia, and a prolonged battle for global hegemony by the minority Caucasian world. In this analysis, Russia is the lynchpin: straddling the Eurasian continent, it is turning away from Gorbatchev’s aspirations for a ‘Common European Home’, to assume its Eurasian ‘destiny’ (a heavy word, but appropriate here), that will eventually include Europe when Europe’s leaders gather the courage to free themselves from American tutelage - perhaps as a long-term result of the botched Ukrainian adventure combined with the economic crisis. (Even Germany is balking at poneying up 2% of its GDP for military adventures, not to mention the countries hit by Wall St imposed austerity (to put it telegraphically).

Putin’s Eurasian vision is not a land grab: much more meaningfully, it places Russia firmly on the side of ‘The Rest’ together with China, in opposition to the Caucasian versus ‘The Rest’ worldview represented by NATO. Come to think of it, that aspiration sees Putin-the-judoist overseeing a tectonic shift away from the legacy of Peter the Great, who brought European technology to a Russia that was the victim of its geography: with the Eurasia project Russia assumes its destiny within a multi-colored and multi-cultural continent.

Western politicians and the media claim that: “Russia seeks to recreate the Soviet Union, whereas we want the former Soviet Republics to be independent, democratic countries, freely choosing their governments and alliances”. The reality is that in the twenty-first century, as opposed to the ‘Enlightened’ eighteenth, ‘democratic’ does not mean government of, by and for the people, but acquiescence to rule by a worldwide corporate oligarchy.

With more and more people coming to this realization across the five continents, NATO’s Rapid Response Force will eventually be taken over by a successor to the United Nations. In lieu of the pipe-dream of indefinite hegemony, the Caucasian world minority should be adopting policies that will result in fair representation in a world government whose structure and functioning will be determined by ‘The Rest’.

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Welcome to Otherjones!

The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

This blog aims to prepare my readers in ways more important than stockpiling food and bandages for whatever happens, as we transition from an American century to a world century, helping them see through the web of lies with which we are being controlled.

Having lived for years at a time in half a dozen ‘foreign’, countries — learning their languages and histories — I have a unique ability to identify events that bear watching. That life, however, could not provide ‘retirement benefits’, so if you appreciate the unique combination of information and insight that characterizes my work, I hope you will integrate a small donation to Otherjones into your budget.

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If You Had Been Watching....

One of the worst aspects of the US media landscape is its neglect of what goes on in the rest of the world. When I returned from nineteen years of living in France, where I sometimes watched CNN’s excellent coverage of world events, I was surprised that in the US, CNN offered nothing comparable. I called the main editorial office in New York and was told ’Americans aren’t interested in foreign affairs’, revealing one one the reasons why the US government gets away with wreaking havoc around the world: Americans have no information that would prompt them to protest their county’s actions abroad.

The fact is that several countries’ governments — aside from the British — fund international television channels. These include France 24, NHK (Japan) , Al-Jazeera (Qatar) RT (Russia) and Telesur (Latin America). These channels usually broadcast in English, Spanish and Arabic, using native speakers, enabling most people in most parts of the world to hear news that their national outlets do not cover and get a broad window onto the world.

Meanwhile, Americans are told that the channel that is most significant for them, RT, is propaganda!

RT is significant not only because, like the other foreign channels it offers a wide range of programs but because it includes opinions from many well-known Americans who are barred from our own mainstream media.

From time to time I will signal significant news stories covered by these foreign channels that are absent from our own.